William Knell (d. 1587)

A member of the company at its inception in 1583, or by 1585 at the latest.
Nashe’s Pierce Penniless (1592) praises Knell’s acting alongside Tarlton’s and Alleyn’s. Heywood’s Apology for Actors (1612) also remembers him as a talent.
Credited with playing Henry the fift in Tarlton’s Jests, presumably in The Famous Victories (before his death in 1587). This is the only known assignment of a role but it points to one capable of taking vigorous, youthful parts.
A coroner’s inquest reports that on 13 June, 1587, between 9 and 10 pm, Knell entered a close called White Hound in Thame, Oxfordshire and assaulted John Towne, his fellow actor. Towne, fearing for his life, took to the high ground of a nearby mound and put his sword through Knell’s neck in self-defence. Knell was dead within the half-hour. The Queen pardoned Towne on 15 August after it was determined he acted in self-defense (Eccles, Shakespeare in Warwickshire 82–83, 157–158).
Less than a year earlier, Knell had married Rebecca Edwards at St. Mary Aldermanbury, London. She was widowed at fifteen. She was soon re-married, aged sixteen, to John Heminges, who would become Shakespeare’s longstanding fellow in the Chamberlain’s Men and may also have acted with the Queen’s company.
There has been speculation that Knell’s absence opened a door for Shakespeare to join the company as it toured Warwickshire, though no firm evidence supports this.

Prosopography

Andrew Griffin

Andrew Griffin is an associate professor in the department of English and an affiliate professor in the department of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is general editor (text) of Queen’s Men Editions. He studies early modern drama and early modern historiography while serving as the lead editor at the EMC Imprint. He has co-edited with Helen Ostovich and Holger Schott Syme Locating the Queen’s Men (2009) and has co-edited The Making of a Broadside Ballad (2016) with Patricia Fumerton and Carl Stahmer. His monograph, Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama: Biography, History, Catastrophe, was published with the University of Toronto Press in 2019. He is editor of the anonymous The Chronicle History of King Leir (Queen’s Men Editions, 2011). He can be contacted at griffin@english.ucsb.edu.

Navarra Houldin

Project manager 2022-present. Textual remediator 2021-present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.

Peter Cockett

Peter Cockett is an associate professor in the Theatre and Film Studies at McMaster University. He is the general editor (performance), and technical co-ordinating editor of Queen’s Men Editions. He was the stage director for the Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men project (SQM), directing King Leir, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and he is the performance editor for our editions of those plays. The process behind those productions is documented in depth on his website Performing the Queen’s Men. Also featured on this site are his PAR productions of Clyomon and Clamydes (2009) and Three Ladies of London (2014). For the PLS, the University of Toronto’s Medieval and Renaissance Players, he has directed the Digby Mary Magdalene (2003) and the double bill of George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale and the Chester Antichrist (2004). He also directed An Experiment in Elizabethan Comedy (2005) for the SQM project and Inside Out: The Persistence of Allegory (2008) in collaboration with Alan Dessen. Peter is a professional actor and director with numerous stage and screen credits. He can be contacted at cockett@mcmaster.ca.

Bibliography

Eccles, Mark. Shakespeare in Warwickshire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961. WSB aav113.
Heywood, Thomas. Apology for Actors. London: Nicholas Okes, 1612. STC 13309. ESTC S106113.
Nashe, Thomas. Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil. London: Abel Jeffes, 1592.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Metadata